We would like to address some questions that are always asked at this time a year, regarding the inevitable cold and flu season. Our class guidelines state to not attend class if you or your child is sick. A good guideline to follow is to be fever free for 24 hours, and for a nose not to be running with anything other than clear. It is VERY common for babies and toddlers to have runny noses due to teething. It is VERY hard to distinguish that from being sick. If you at all feel that your child is under the weather, remain home and schedule a makeup class by emailing info@growandsing.com.

We wanted to let everyone know our studio wide procedures for attempting to keep our classrooms as sanitized as possible. While it is impossible to guarantee you that our instruments and props are 100% sanitized, we do our best to minimize sickness. We spray instruments, etc. with Clorox Anywhere, and tumble dry all fabric items in the dryer. After doing much research, Clorox Anywhere seems to be the safest product to use for our purposes. Here is a link to read more about the product.

As those in our classes know, we keep this product ON HAND at all classes so that we can all make an effort together to help avoid the spread of germs. If your child has mouthed an instrument during class, please bring it up to our “sanitation station” (or as Mr. Richard likes to call it the “spit station”), when finished and spray it with the Clorox Anywhere. If we all make an effort together, we can try to eliminate spreading sickness to each other. Though again, there is never anything we can do to “guarantee” as in any public setting.

Again, by spraying our instruments we are not promising a 100% sanitary environment. We stand by the most important way to avoid sickness – WASH HANDS!! We suggest that before class begins, and after class ends, you and your child wash hands with SOAP and WATER if possible. We try to have some antibacterial gel available as well. We have been using these procedures and guidelines for over 6 years, and they have worked well.

Here is some information about sanitizers.

For alcohol-based hand sanitizers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends an alcohol concentration of 60 to 95% of ethanol or isopropanol for the great efficacy in killing germs. In the study listed above, it was found that some hand sanitizer products purchased from local retail deep-discount stores, advertising the same claims as those found on name-brand products such as Purell, had, in reality, only a 40% ethyl alcohol concentration – much too low to reduce bacterial counts on hands. In fact, the faulty product seemed to “mobilize the bacteria, spreading them around the hand instead of killing them.” (N.Y.Times: Hand Sanitizers: Good or Bad? , by Deborah Franklin, March 21, 2006)

We hope, that by using the Clorox Anywhere, washing hands, and not coming to class sick, we can avoid spreading sickness back and forth. Of course we all know that this just happens, and that no matter what we do, it is still going to occur. All we can do is try our best!

If anyone has ANY questions about this, please don’t hesitate to ask. Again, thank you in advance for working with us on making Grow and Sing Studios a healthy environment for all!!!